As
global cryptocurrency markets are now averaging the same daily trading
volumes as the New York Stock Exchange of the $50 billion mark, doubts
continue to linger on the viability of this new medium of exchange.
The cryptocurrency market is arguably closer to the foreign-exchange
market but with a major difference.

Currency
exchanges tend to balance value of national currencies as means of equalizing
economies and import-export imbalances. When the yen reaches 120 to
a U.S. dollar, it gives Japan an advantage in foreign trade because
its goods are relatively cheaper due to the exchange rate. In this exchange
market, real currencies are the basis for the balance sheet valuations.
But with cryptocurrencies, the market is different: it is being traded
as future contracts and not actual original Bitcoin. In 2017, some members
of the bitcoin community felt that adopting BIP 91 without increasing
the block-size limit would simply delay confronting the bitcoin scalability
problem and that it favored people who wanted to treat bitcoin as a
digital investment rather than as a transactional currency. They announced
implementation of Bitcoin Cash as a hard fork for August 1. It inherited
the transaction history of the bitcoin currency on that date, but all
later transactions were separate. Institutional exchanges such as the
Board of Trade use commodity hedge contracts that are paid off in dollars
and not in actual cryptocurrencies

Unlike
the foreign-exchange market, cryptocurrency trading is largely done
by small-time, retail investors, making it closer to the stock market
(though some huge institutions are playing in the market.) It is a classic
Gold Rush mentality and commodity bubble as the price of a Bitcoin
skyrocketed 1,600 percent which fueled more speculative gamblers. A
boom in so-called initial coin offerings, in which startups issue their
own cryptocurrencies to raise money, has created a raft of other digital
assets for investors to speculate on. There are now more than 1,300
cryptocurrencies in circulation, according to CoinMarketCap.com. But
many people within the financial industry have expressed concern about
the largely unregulated market. As Business Insider reported, Britain's
top financial regulator warned that people should be prepared to lose
all the money they invest in bitcoin, and JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon has
called cryptocurrencies a scam. According to Saxo Bank's
forecasts, in 2018 bitcoin will reach a capitalization of $1 trillion
which could make it as critics say, the largest ponzi scheme in history.

According
to reference sources, Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency and worldwide payment
system that is based on small fractional denominations. It is the first
decentralized digital currency: a system works without a central repository
or single administrator such as the Federal Reserve which regulates
the amount of cash in the US economy. The network is peer-to-peer and
transactions take place between users directly through the use of cryptography,
without an intermediary. These transactions are verified by network
nodes and recorded in a public distributed ledger called a blockchain.
Bitcoins are created as a reward for a process known as mining. They
can be exchanged for other currencies, products, and services. Wikipedia
states that more than 100,000 merchants and vendors accept bitcoin as
payment. Research produced by Cambridge University estimates that in
2017, there are 2.9 to 6.8 million unique users using a cryptocurrency
wallet, most of them using bitcoin. There are more than 28 functioning
cryptocurrencies in use, including Litecoin which operates like Bitcoin
but states it is faster and cheaper to use.

The
blockchain is a public ledger that records bitcoin transactions. A novel
solution accomplishes this without any trusted central authority: the
maintenance of the blockchain is performed by a network of communicating
nodes running bitcoin software. Transactions of the form payer X sends
Y bitcoins to payee Z are broadcast to this network using readily available
software applications. Network nodes can validate transactions, add
them to their copy of the ledger, and then broadcast these ledger additions
to other nodes. The blockchain is a distributed database to achieve
independent verification of the chain of ownership of any and every
bitcoin amount, each network node stores its own copy of the blockchain.
Approximately six times per hour, a new Number of unspent transaction
outputs group of accepted transactions, a block, is created, added to
the blockchain, and quickly published to all nodes. This allows bitcoin
software to determine when a particular bitcoin amount has been spent,
which is necessary in order to prevent double-spending in an environment
without central oversight. Whereas a conventional ledger records the
transfers of actual bills or promissory notes that exist apart from
it, the blockchain is the only place that bitcoins can be said to exist
in the form of unspent outputs of transactions. Source: Wikipedia.

Arstechnica
described the process in more detail: when a user wants to make a bitcoin
payment, she uses software to create a new transaction. From the user's
perspective, this just means entering the amount of the transaction
and the bitcoin address of the recipient into the bitcoin software and
clicking send. The user's client software will formulate the
transaction and send it to a nearby node in the bitcoin network. The
first node to hear about the transaction shares it with others until
it is widely distributed throughout the network. Some of the nodes are
miners that participate in the process of actually updating the
blockchain. A miner makes a list of all the transactions it has heard
about that are not already in the blockchain. It checks to make sure
that each transaction follows all of the rules of bitcoin: valid signatures,
sum of outputs no greater than sum of inputs, and so forth. It will
discard those attempted transactions that break the rules. The resulting
list of new, valid transactions is called a block. The miner
also adds a special transaction granting itself a a reward - - currently
12.5 bitcoins - - for creating the block. Because of the skyrocketing
value of a bitcoin, all miners would like to add the next block to the
blockchain. To win the right to add the next block, bitcoin miners compete
against each other by performing a highly repetitive computation. They
add a random value called a nonce to the candidate block they
have assembled. Then they apply the SHA-256 hash function, which produces
a short, seemingly random string of 1s and 0s that serves as a cryptographic
fingerprint for the block. The goal is to send a block whose hash is
very small binary value starts with a large number of zeroes. Because
SHA-256 hash values are essentially random, the only way to send a very
low value is by repeated guessing. Most of the time, the hash value
will be too high and the miner will repeat the process - - changing
the nonce and computing another hash value. Whoever sends a block first
announces it to the rest of the network. Everyone else verifies that
the hash is low enough and that its transactions are all valid. If so,
they then add that block to their copy of the blockchain. Everyone moves
on to the next round of the race to complete the next blockchain.

Unlike
tangible forms of currency (paper or precious metals and gems), cryptocurrencies
are totally virtual. In the blockchain, bitcoins are registered to bitcoin
addresses. Creating a bitcoin address is nothing more than picking a
random valid private key and computing the corresponding bitcoin address.
This computation can be done in a split second. But the reverse (computing
the private key of a given bitcoin address) is mathematically unfeasible
and so users can tell others and make public a bitcoin address without
compromising its corresponding private key. Moreover, the number of
valid private keys is so vast that it is extremely unlikely someone
will compute a key-pair that is already in use and has funds. The vast
number of valid private keys makes it unfeasible that brute force could
be used for that. To be able to spend the bitcoins, the owner must know
the corresponding private key and digitally sign the transaction. The
network verifies the signature using the public key. If the private
key is lost, the bitcoin network will not recognize any other evidence
of ownership; the coins are then unusable, and effectively lost.

However,
various media outlets have reported that hackers have stolen bitcoins
from exchanges, individuals and miners by taking over their computer
systems. Also, because of the vast computing power necessary to create
blockchains and bitcoins, hackers have also started to hijack computers
to perform stealth processing power.

A
CNBC reporter decided to experience the Bitcoin boom. He bought $200
worth of bitcoin in December for a story about how to give the gift
of bitcoin during the holiday season. He bought bitcoin and held it
for a weekend. It's value fluctuated a lot, for reasons he could not
always understand. He sold his bitcoin and he concluded he would not
buy it ever again. This is the problem with any virtual currency: if
people really do not understand it, they will not trust it enough to
actually adopt it.

The
Street.com's contributor Doug Kass knows the final chapter to the Bitcoin
mania will happen in 2018. He wrote My expectation is that bitcoin
becomes ever-more popular over the near term. The publication of this
surprise - - that bitcoin will collapse in price in 2018 - - results
in growing public and elsewhere from bitcoin devotees over the next
few weeks toward me. I am called a no coiner, bitcoin disbelievers
such as myself. No coiners are defined as people who missed out
on the rise and have become skeptical and bitter, and who state that
it's only a matter of time before the price it's a collective delusion.
In early 2018 the popularity of cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin crests.
Bitcoin ATMs even become Boca Raton, Florida, reminding us of the historic
relationship between that town and past frauds and Raton has been the
home of so many fraudulent schemes -- currency trading schemes, rare
coin scams timeshares for fictitious vacation homes. * * * As governments
including the US introduce their own government-based cryptocurrencies
based on continue to control policy levers such as money supply and
fiscal policy. The eventual demise for bitcoin commences in earnest
when it is revealed in a New York Times expose 10 entities, mostly residing
in China and Japan, are found to have manipulated the price of bitcoins
scheme fashion over the last two years. The cryptocurrency bubble finally
collapses in dramatic fashion value by 90% as a result of direct government
intervention and a successful hacking where thieves blockchain code
and steal a large amount of coins. Several large, well-known hedge funds
desperate for (early large gains) are caught with their pants and portfolios
large weighting in bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies; they lose more
than 30% of their funds' assets forced to liquidate their cryptocurrency
holdings and close their funds. Bitcoin assumes a permanent place in
the Speculative Hall of Fame, along with tulips (1636-37), , the housing
bubble (2005-07) and the South Sea Bubble (1711-20), as traders and
investors lesson, once again, that an asset class founded on the notion
that there is a greater fool who will be asset for more than the previous
fool paid, almost always ends in disaster.

A
hard crash speculation has been bolstered as the South Korean government,
where the third largest use of cryptocurrency exists, has decided to
heavily regulate this market. As a result, cryptocurrency values dropped
dramatically. The reason is clear: if government begin to regulate cryptocurrencies
like any other financial security, these regulations and capitalization
requirements as well as security and law compliance documentation, will
make it impossible for individual miners to operate under the cover
of being off the regulation grid. For nations, the regulation of means
of exchange (their currencies) is the power to control the economy and
in turn, control their citizens. The old adage that he who controls
the currency press controls the country is still true today. Cryptocurrencies
are the means to avoid having to report to a government master (such
as to continue illegal transactions on the dark web in secrecy). But
when the speculative bubble will burst, it may go back into hiding in
the corners of digital world instead of becoming a mainstream property.

iToons

cyberbarf

FACING
YOUR HEALTH COMMENTARY

Facebook
just admitted that using Facebook can be bad for you. Facebook said
in December that there are certain user cases that the social network
that can be bad for your health. It also found that some cases can be
positive, specifically social interaction, and said it is going to work
to improve those features.

Just
as the world's social media universe is consolidating into a handful
of powerful players, including Facebook, it is odd that one of the power
conglomerates admits that its services can be harmful to its consumers.
It is odd that the story had the half-life of an afternoon since most
people got distracted by the other bells and whistles the internet has
to offer to actually consider whether their Internet life could actually
be harming them.

Facebook's
former vice president for user growth Chamath Palihapitiya recently
gave a talk at the Stanford Graduate School of Business that will probably
make you think twice about your social media use (via the Verge). He
feels tremendous guilt about Facebook. I think we have
created tools that are ripping apart the social fabric of how society
works. . . . The short term, dopamine-driven feedback loops we've created
([including the hearts, likes, and thumbs up of various social media
channels) are destroying how society works, he said. He added,
(There is) no civil discourse, no cooperation; (only) misinformation,
mistruth. And it's not an American problem - - -this is not about Russians
ads. This is a global problem. He concluded by saying that he
would not allow his children to use social media. (He would later backtrack
on some of his comments.)

There
is a human need for acknowledgment and appreciation which Facebook and
other social media platforms use to leverage continued use of their
services. It is almost an attention addiction. Instead of meeting a
person in person, to have an actual verbal conversation, people
are gravitating towards making their social interactions by posts, photos
and emoticon likes to FB friend posts. There is a danger of creating
a hermit society that does not need human to human interaction to feel
a part of a community (or even a family unit.)

In
the past few years, society has been caught in significant epidemics
of opiod overdoses, suicides and a bully culture which have roots in
the Internet age. A young woman was put on trial for coaxing her despondent
boyfriend to commit suicide. Local hospitals are overwhelmed by middle
class opiod overdoses. American political discourse has de-evolved into
petty snippets of hate speech.

One
could rage against the 160 character thought bubble that consumes many
people's daily lives. But in any endeavor or overdose, personal moderation
is the key to balance one's life. There have been a few writers who
decided to cut the cord during their vacations: no cell phones, no Internet,
no cable - - - nothing. An off-the-grid existence for a short time to
purge the tentacle of the digital beast. Some found that they had withdrawal
symptoms. Others found a new state of relaxation - - - new free time
to do other things; to actually experience nature, other family members
and create new memories. Ironically, they wrote and posted their stories
on the same platforms that they had avoided so well.

The
litmus test is simple. If you post then are anxious to get an immediate
response, you need to pull back your expectations and the digital confirmation
of your thoughts and existence. Take a day off. You will find that you
really did not miss much.

cyberbarf

FOUND
BUT NOT LOST ON THE INTERNET

Ariel
McGlothin was hoping to capture some local wildlife in Wyoming. She
inadvertently witnessed an incredibly rare spectacle, a ghost snow tsunami,
a huge wall of icy powder, a strange mirage began to form as the sun
- - aligned perfectly with the direction of the wind - - began to highlight
snow crystals moving in the cold wind, resembling a series of ghostly
waves crashing against a shoreline.

Source:Metro.co.uk/Caters.

While
talking to IGN Brazil, Sin City director Robert Rodriguez explained
the decision in the new movie, Alita: Battle Angel anime-style
eyes. He said the early artwork showed the eyes before it was even technically
possible, but it was so striking and so arresting, he thought, he had
to do it to bring the character to life.